


Orange Groves

by queenie



Category: Wither-The Chemical Garden Series
Genre: F/M, Not Canon Compliant, plural marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-15
Updated: 2011-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-27 09:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenie/pseuds/queenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhine doesn't run away with Gabriel. Not ending compliant. Linden/Rhine. References to Linden/Cecily, which means nongraphic references to underage sex and pregnancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orange Groves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [impactvelocity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impactvelocity/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy!

Rhine dreamed of escape, of romance, of finding her brother. She dreamed of the ruins of New York and worlds long dead and buried (like Rose, like Jenna). She dreamed of leaving the manor forever, but when she awoke she was in the same bed, in the same place.

But, something broke in her the longer she stayed in the manor. A piece when Cecily knew she was pregnant. A piece when Jenna died. A piece each time Linden crept into her bed at night, only to cry himself to sleep in her arms.

Most things don’t go like the books she’d read. Things didn’t happen just because they were right. Most things just stay the same.

\--

When Linden put the ring on her finger his hands were clammy and shook like he was nervous. He couldn’t quite look her in the eyes when he said the words.

She might have found that endearing in different circumstances.

\--

If she tries to distance herself from the constant physical reminder that the orange groves are indigenous to Florida, that seeing them means she is that much farther from home, that much impossibly distant from the only family she has left in the world, she can admit to herself that they are very beautiful. She finds herself looking at them more and more often nowadays. She walks the gardens and she looks at the tropical flora; the ache of what she’s lost has dimmed noticeably. She wonders if one day she’ll be able to forget it completely. Not today, though. Not yet.

When they’re ripe she fills her arms with the bright orange globes and takes them back to her rooms. Deirdre finds her a large, decorative bowl for her to put them in while she waits for them to ripen.

She eats one the same day.

One of the male servants comes up with a sharp, ceramic knife and cuts it into quarters. She knows the boy. Once, she had felt the blossom of attraction and maybe hope, but she’s pushed that down as far as it can go now, has done so for so long it’s almost left all by itself. He is just a boy, and she thinks he knows it too.

The fruit isn’t ready yet, it’s too tart, but she eats it anyway, piece by piece, until nothing is left but the bright peels.

\--

Linden comes to see her more often now that the baby is getting older. In the beginning he had hovered over Cecily and their new child, bursting with the excitement and hope a new child always brings. But, the baby got older and refused to feed. Rhine had seen Vaughn with the child and the formula, but she any time she tried to bring it up with either Cecily or Linden she was met only with naïve confusion or denial. She let it fester and eventually die with the rest of her protests.

The strain between mother and son grows still and the more it does the more Linden seeks solace in her company. Rhine can’t help but enjoy it. She likes Linden, despite everything. She can’t even try to hate him, knowing what she does now.

“I used to think I would go so many places,” he tells her. “Me and Rose. We thought we had all the time in the world. We thought we’d never need anyone but each other.”

“Everyone thinks like that,” she says, thinking of Rowan faraway in New York. She thinks, as she often does, if he’s okay. She tries to recall his face but it is fuzzy and indistinct.

“Is there someone you miss?”

“What do you mean?”

Sometimes Linden looks at her like he knows she’s hiding something. Sometimes he looks with more depth than she normally sees, his face showing an expression she can’t quite place.

“Do you miss someone like I miss Rose?”

She almost wants to tell him everything, then. She wonders if she cries, if he’d let her cry in his arms. She wonders when she started to want just that.

“Yes,” she says instead, her face a cool mask. “But, he’s long gone by now.”

\--

Jenna had been surprised when Rhine told her she had not consummated with Linden yet. She supposed she was too. But, whatever it was he looked for in his other wives he didn’t seem to need in her.

When they were together they talked about the complicated lines of architectural drafts and the too-bright colors of the Floridian trees. They talked about Rose and forevers and they didn’t talk about dying, even though the talk of death was always there in the unsaid words between them.

One day Linden held her hand and the warm metal of his wedding band pressed against her skin. One day he kissed her and his mouth was cool and tasted dimly of fruit and she was surprised to find it was a pleasant feeling, being kissed by this man who she had hated so much when she met him. His hands didn’t shake that day, she remembered. He seemed very sure of himself at the time.

\--

At night he comes into her room, but it is different than other nights. No tears. No talk of Rose. There’s something determined in his eyes and the way he closes the door.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

She knows he hasn’t spent the night with Cecily since Browan was born. She knows because Cecily tells her often in her attempts to rekindle a bond between them. The thought of Cecily and Linden together still makes Rhine uneasy. To her, Cecily is still a child, though she has gone through so many things a child should never have to go through. She still remembers the glitter and fairy wings of her sister-wife’s wedding dress.

Linden walks over to the table with the bowl of oranges on it. She hasn’t eaten one since the day she picked them, so the fruit are still in the artful arrangement she had first put them in. He picks one up and turns it over in his hands.  
“You’ve let them sit too long,” he says instead of answering her question. “Most of them have gone bad now.”  
He walks over to her bedside and sits on the mattress beside her. His weight makes the bed dip and she turns more towards him, feeling the warmth of his body against her stomach.

When she looks at the orange in his hand she sees the bruise that has blossomed along one side and the small hole that is now in it. When he squeezes it is not juice that comes out but a thin stream if ants. His nose wrinkling in distaste, he drops it to the floor and it rolls away.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, quitter now. She doesn’t know why she feels the need to whisper, as if raising her voice would break the strange mood that has come over them.

He doesn’t say anything. He folds himself over so he is at eye level with her and he kisses her, but it is different than the other kisses they’ve shared, the ones in the gardens, in the daylight. There is a hunger there, one she is surprised to find that she shares.  
When he climbs under the sheets with her it is not to cry over what he’s lost. When he goes to remove her nightgown she does not try to evade him, and she does not want to.

\--

After, when he is sleeping and she is left to herself, warm and sated and surprisingly close to contentment, she touches the band around her finger and she can barely remember New York or Rowan. She thinks of the oranges out in the garden, the rotten fruit on her table, and the warm confines of Linden’s arms around her.

\--


End file.
